Cigar warehouse was transformed into contemporary arts institution

Nov. 5, 2013

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Written by

Jamie McGee

The Tennessean

:

OZ is a new contemporary arts institute in Nashville that will showcase dance, music, theater, design and — eventually — visual arts from leading national and international artists. / Sanford Myers / The Tennessean

Next steps

Nov. 20The Ozgeners will announce programming for OZ’s inaugural season at 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle from 6 to 8 p.m.

Feb. 13OZ will present its first performance.

OZ : Present and future

During the past year, OZ has been used as an event space as the Ozgener family has prepared for the arts center. The grounds include a contemporary patio, a sculpture garden, a Japanese zen garden, and indoor and outdoor venues used for parties, performances and weddings.

Works from local artists, including Cano Ozgener, are featured in the indoor exhibits and hallways, and the building still holds a cigar business, Crowned Heads, which has been distributing cigars since 2009.

In OZ’s first two years as a contemporary arts center showcasing “Brave New Art,” the 10,000-square-foot exhibit room will be used for performance art — film, theater, dance and music — and large-scale visual arts will be incorporated in later years.

When Nashville cigar producer Cano Ozgener sold his cigar brand and the operations moved elsewhere in 2010, he was faced with the decision of what to do with the cavernous warehouse he had built near John C. Tune Airport just six years earlier.

Amid eight years of battling health issues that included two rounds of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomaand open heart surgery, Ozgener, a Turkish-Armenian immigrant, discovered his own talent and the joy he found in visual arts. When he considered how he wanted to spend the next years of his life, he decided he would transform the space into a contemporary arts institution for the region.

Today, the reborn space features a 10,000-square-foot grand salon, a swanky ultra lounge, an outdoor veranda modeled after a five-star safari resort and the “Escaparate,” which served as the family’s personal humidor for more than 100,000 pieces of a private cigar collection. Now, it serves as OZ’s focal point and has been given a second life as a modern art gallery.

“We are cultivating our souls with art,” Ozgener said. “When you go through these (medical) procedures, your body is incapacitated. However, your mind, your spirit is alive, and art is the best way of nourishing this.”

Come February, the building that previously housed and distributed millions of cigars from Central America will host its first contemporary art performance, and the center, OZ, will begin showcasing dance, music, theater, design and — eventually — visual arts from leading national and international artists. The Ozgener family is modeling OZ after Park Avenue Armory and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and the MASS MoCA exhibit center in North Adams, Mass., and they have met with directors and curators from those centers to help develop their program.

Ozgener moved to the U.S. from Istanbul in 1961 to study engineering at Columbia University in New York, where he met his wife, Esen, a Fulbright scholar. When Esen chose to pursue a degree at Peabody College in 1968, they moved to Nashville.

That same year, while working for DuPont, Cano Ozgener began making smoking pipes that he and his family would store and ship from their basement in the Hillwood neighborhood. The pipes, which Turkish artists and craftsmen would carve by hand from meerschaum mineral, had elaborate designs, modeled on images ranging from cowboys to Richard Nixon.

“We learned to be entrepreneurial at an early age,” said son Tim Ozgener, OZ owner. “As we were watching football, we were pricing pipes.”

Cano Ozgener eventually left DuPont to focus on building his business, and in the 1990s, the Ozgeners shifted to the humidor and cigar business, forming C.A.O. International Inc. With Tim Ozgener and his sister, Aylin, in executive roles, they built the warehouse off Cockrill Bend Circle in 2004 before selling the brand in 2007 to a Danish conglomerate, Scandinavian Tobacco Group. Operations continued in Nashville until that business merged with Swedish Match and moved to Richmond, Va.

“This country has been good for us, so we want to give back to this country, especially to Nashville,” Cano Ozgener said. “I realize more how important art is. Great cities exist because they have great art. I want Nashville to be at that level.”

His story inspires

It is Ozgener’s story of gratitude toward a country and his dedication to the arts that has inspired prominent art consultants and curators, including Kristy Edmunds in Los Angeles and Patterson Sims in New York, and OZ artistic director Lauren Snelling to join Ozgener’s team.

Edmunds, executive and artistic director at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, has helped cultivate a lineup of renowned artists and supports OZ’s development without charge, which she says is rare in the art world.

“I respected very deeply what they were trying to do, (and) I respected their integrity, their real passionate depth of purpose,” she said.

Cano Ozgener said Nashville’s reputation as a music and creative hub has helped spur interest among artists. Snelling, who worked previously at Park Avenue Armory in New York and for the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia, said the reactions among artists they have reached out to have been positive.

“Nashville is a city they’ve really wanted to engage,” Snelling said. “The reception has been incredibly positive, and what we are conveying to them is the opportunity to present their work in a nontraditional context.”

Connie Valentine, an arts consultant and former CEO of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville, said while Nashville already has a well-developed contemporary arts community, OZ will help bring international awareness about the city’s arts scene.

“This accentuates what’s already happened here,” she said. “It allows us to create a reach beyond anything we’ve touched before. The Ozgeners are making it world-class.”

A light on locals

In addition to bringing in artists from across the country and international artists, Snelling said, engaging and showcasing local artists also is a priority for OZ. The center also will work with area schools as part of its education outreach, and it is meant to complement the city’s existing arts centers, including Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, and Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Edmunds commended the Ozgeners for establishing a nonprofit that will be an asset to the city.

“Often when something new comes into the sphere of possibility, when something kind of arrives unexpected, we as a community don’t often know what to do with it,” she said. “My advice is make absolute, ample use of what these people are trying to give because it is a gift. For the gift to be able to sustain over time, it will require other people to feel inspired by it and get involved.”